Bella allowed herself a smile. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“I am.”
“Very well. Your good health.”
“And yours.”
The first sip went down like liquid fire, but Bella found herself immediately wanting another. “I am not an expert on the subject, but I think this is a very fine cognac.”
“The best,” Carolina said without modesty. “My ships bring it directly from France.”
“Yes. Well, that’s what I came to talk about. Your ships.”
Since it was not some sort of emergency involving the shared enterprise of their menfolk, Carolina waited.
Bella took another sip of cognac. This time it was comforting warmth only. Nothing like fire. “The underground railway.” She blurted it out because she could think of no subtle way to introduce the topic. “That’s what I’ve come to discuss.”
“Indeed.”
“I don’t know how you feel, Mrs. Devrey, but…” Bella blushed.
“Please, call me Carolina. It is easier for both of us that way. And I think the underground railway a brave and very necessary thing to combat a wicked, wicked injustice. But I have five children, Mrs. Klein—”
“Bella. If you are Carolina, I am Bella.”
“Very well. I have five children, Bella.”
“I have seven.”
“Yes, but I already live outside the norms of society. My children can be made to bear a great deal of suffering because of choices not theirs but those of their parents.”
“Whose children can not?” Bella asked. “And you are very wealthy. That will help to protect them.”
Carolina’s eyes opened wide. Most men would not make such an unvarnished statement about the uses of money. Coming from a woman it was breathtaking. “A thousand-dollar fine is a considerable penalty.”
“Six months in prison would be far worse. I am much more afraid of that. I have nightmares about it. Who would look after my babies? My Rachel, my youngest, is still nursing.” She had expelled a beaker of milk before she left the house earlier today so that the baby could be fed from a bottle. Six months in prison, however, was something else entirely.
“You have nightmares, but you are actively involved in the underground railway and you wish me to become involved as well. Either because of my isolated house or my shipping connections.”
“Both,” Bella said. “You have such advantages to offer, and I have heard my husband say that Dr. Turner shares our views on the issue of slavery, so I was sure you must as well. So many blandishments were too much temptation to resist.”
“How could you be sure I would have the same opinion as Nicholas Turner on this matter?” Carolina sat back and waited for an answer. It was the measure of the thing as far as she was concerned. To become involved in something so dangerous she had to know this woman’s true mettle.
“Because slavery is about buying and selling human beings, but people do not admit that. They talk about how the Negroes need to be protected and how well they are looked after, when what they mean is that they want to own other human beings so they will be richer. I do not believe that Dr. Turner could love a woman who would condone such a thing. I do not think he would risk his entire professional reputation to be with a woman who did not think as he did on a matter of such profound moral importance.”
“I take it you refer to an opinion the woman had formed on her own, not simply adopted because it was that of her hus—of the man she loved.”
“Of course formed on her own. We are not china dolls, Carolina. We do not have smiles someone else has painted on our faces and arms and legs that move according to how someone else bends them. But if that is not true of you and I with our white skins, why should it be true of a woman with a black skin? Why is she a…a commodity to be exchanged for money?”
“In a sense,” Carolina said very quietly, “all women are that.”
“Not I,” Bella said firmly. “And I think not you either.”
“Exactly,” Carolina said. “Now tell me what I can do to help.”
Chapter Thirty-two
“WHY YOU NOT go back to Manhattanville place?” Ah Chee demanded. “Why? Always after Christmas festival you go back. Why not this time?”
“Too much education,” Mei Lin said. “Head is not big enough to stuff more in.”
Ah Chee made a disbelieving noise and turned back to the soup she was making, meanwhile watching the girl tie on her bonnet. “Where you go in black-white women clothes?”
Her school clothes were all Mei Lin had that looked appropriate on the streets of New York. She had carefully unpicked the emblems that marked her as a student at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. “I’m going to church,” she said. “It’s Sunday and it is a sin not to attend Holy Mass on a Sunday. I will return in one this-place hour. Do not unlock the door, Ah Chee. Do not allow any person to come in.”
“How you think this old woman let bad peoples in this house? How? All this time I keep them out, how you think I let them in now?”
“Do not open the door.” Mei Lin leaned forward to kiss Ah Chee’s wrinkled cheek, but Ah Chee pulled herself away.
“They light joss sticks in this church place,” Ah Chee said. “From outside I smell them.”
“No joss sticks. None. Not true. Not.”
“Yes true. Stand outside when you are little girl. Smell joss sticks.”
Ah Chee had smelled the incense, Mei Lin realized. It is a symbol, mes enfants, the rising smoke is a sign of our prayers rising to God. Just like a joss stick. The thought had never before occurred to her, but Mei Lin turned and left the kitchen without telling Ah Chee she was right.
There was no incense at the early Mass at St. Mary’s on Grand Street. A good thing. Services that involved such things as censers and choirs, which were anyway reserved for major holy days, might take as much as two hours, and she had no time to attend a High Mass.
When your father dies, the richer among the civilized men intend to play Ya Pei for the tai-tai. The winner of the game will take her as his concubine. It was her job to protect her mother night and day. But neither could she miss going to church on Sunday.
There was a tall clock in the window of one of the shops on Market Street. Mei Lin had looked as it when she left and did so again on her way home. She had been gone an hour and fifteen minutes. Too long. She would check on Baba before she went upstairs. He had been breathing with great difficulty the night before and wasn’t even aware enough to insist she not come into his room. Taste Bad said it wouldn’t be long now. He said she shouldn’t worry, however, that her baba was not in pain.
She came round the corner to Cherry Street and saw too many men. Never mind that they were all civilized. Normally the area would be deserted at this hour on a Sunday morning, but there were at least a dozen men standing in front of numbers thirty-seven and thirty-nine. Mei Lin scanned their faces urgently, looking for Lee Big Belly. Mr. Chambers said it was probably Big Belly who would organize the game of Ya Pei that would determine Mamee’s fate, but he wasn’t there. Hail Mary, full of grace…She broke into a run.
“In here, mei-mei.” It was Taste Bad, calling her little sister and motioning her to the door of number thirty-nine. “In here.”
He was summoning her inside her baba’s tiny room, where normally she was not permitted to go.
Mei Lin’s first thought was that her father was dead. His face looked like bones without flesh, only a taut covering of the thinnest possible skin. She wanted to cry but instead she remembered her duty and began to pray. “I confess to Almighty God, and to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to all the angels and saints that I have sinned—”
Samuel opened his eyes. “Good. Good. I told Taste Bad to bring you.”
“Baba, you must pray for the salvation of your—”
He waved away her words. “Hush. Give me…under the bed.”
“I don’t understand, Baba. What do you want me to get you from under the bed?” As she spoke M
ei Lin was reaching below the low-slung bedstead; she half expected to discover the opium pipe. It would not surprise her if in these final moments he still craved the poison that had killed him. Instead she felt something large, and of considerable weight. She drew out a canvas satchel. “Is this what you want, Baba? It’s heavy. Where shall I…”
“For you,” Samuel said. “Your legacy. Some day it will be worth…”
Samuel stopped speaking.
“Baba…” And again, with greater urgency, “Baba!”
Taste Bad had been hovering in the doorway, now he came near and put his hand on her shoulder. “All finished, mei-mei. Come away.”
Mei Lin resisted long enough to recite the Confiteor again, right through to the end, begging the holy virgin and all the angels and saints to pray for his soul, then when it seemed she could do no more she whispered “Amen” and stood up. Taste Bad was already gone, so she reached down and hefted the heavy satchel Baba had called her legacy, and let herself out of the wretched little room.
Upstairs two strange men stood either side of Mei Lin’s front door. “Guen, ni guen,” she told them. Go away. She tried to use the tone that said I expect to be obeyed, but she wasn’t sure she succeeded. “Guen.” The words came between hard, hot breaths because she was trying not to cry. If Big Belly had already come for her mother, and posted this guard, she would need to be very strong to resist him. She must not waste her energy on tears. “Guen.”
The men took no offense. They bowed and one said, “Permit me to open the door, honored lady.” When he did so she saw that her mother was quite safe and already wearing white, the color of mourning.
“How did you know?” Mei Lin asked.
In reply Mei-hua wailed. She would wail loudly and often until her lord was in the ground. That was her duty as his supreme first lady. Big noises kept the soul of the deceased from becoming confused and wandering off. It would not lose itself and become a ghost as long as it could be kept hovering nearby until the body was buried.
Ah Chee also wailed.
It fell to Kurt Chambers, standing a respectful distance from her mother, to answer Mei Lin. “The yi, Hor Taste Bad, came and told her. She was not, of course, surprised.”
He had spoken in English. Mei Lin answered him in the same language. “But how did you know? How did you get here?”
“Because Taste-Bad notified me when he was sure that death would come in a matter of minutes. As he was instructed to do. And since I had already been told the end would be soon, I was nearby.”
“How dare Taste Bad tell you before he told my mother.”
“Be grateful,” Chambers said sharply. “I came at once and brought what was needed.”
He nodded to the door and Mei Lin knew he meant the guard on the landing and the men on the street. Without Mr. Chambers her mother might already have been spirited away by Lee Big Belly.
“I apologize,” she said, finally catching her breath and feeling the panic recede. “I am grateful. Truly. You are very kind.”
The English words came too fast for Ah Chee to understand them, but she needed no explanation of the meaning. The lord was dead. The strange yang gwei zih was now the lord. The little bud would belong to him. Already she belonged to him, though Ah Chee knew her privates were still closed-up-little-girl-tender. Very strange lord. Looked like a yang gwei zih, with yellow hair and square face and square body, square hands even, but acted like a civilized person. Soon as he came into the house, immediately went and bowed to Fu Xing and lit a joss stick; then bowed to tai-tai. Very all-time strange for a foreign devil, but never mind. She interrupted her ritual wailing just long enough to instruct the little bud, who had less understanding of these things than the strange yang gwei zih. “Go. Change. Put on proper clothes to honor father.”
“I have nothing white. I never—”
“Yes have. Yes have,” Ah Chee said. “Lord Kurt bring. Go change.”
Lord Kurt, Mei Lin noted. Baba had always been Lord Samuel. But Baba was dead and Mamee must be protected. There was nothing she could do alone, not against a crowd of men such as those on the street who were all loyal to Mr. Chambers. Those she thought would be her allies, Taste Bad and Fat Cheeks and Leper Face and the rest, had already given their allegiance to Mr. Chambers. Apparently even Ah Chee had done so.
Mei Lin walked toward her bedroom conscious that she was still carrying the canvas satchel Baba had given her, and that no one had asked her about it. Mamee and Ah Chee were too busy with their obligatory wailing. And Mr. Chambers chose not to say anything, though she was quite sure he noticed. She went into the bedroom and ignored the white cheongsam and matching lung pao that had been laid out on the bed. At least long enough to put Baba’s mysterious legacy at the very back of the cupboard that contained her ordinary clothes. Only then did she untie her bonnet and prepare to transform herself into a dutiful Chinese daughter.
The death rites pleased Mei-hua. That is what they were meant to do. When Mei Lin objected that her father had not been Chinese, Chambers reminded her that neither was he in any formal sense a Christian. “I do not believe he has had any affiliation with a church here in New York.”
That was true, he had not. And surely her mother, who Mei Lin realized was now alone in a way more profound than ever before, deserved as much comfort as could be offered. So Mei Lin wailed with the others and at the appropriate times did the deep bows called kowtows, kneeling and touching her forehead to the ground. She had learned the rite as a small child; it was appropriate when one or other of the gods was being honored at a major festival. But she had refused to perform it after she was sent to the Convent of the Sacred Heart.
Now she must do so for Mamee’s sake. When Baba’s funeral was over, Mei Lin decided, she would go to confession. Right now the matter of the actual burial was her major concern. Baba lay in their parlor in a sealed coffin covered with a white cloth and many, many white flowers, and a constant stream of Chinese men came to pay their respects—almost none known to them and many, Mei Lin believed, coming repeatedly to make it seem as if the number of visitors was greater than it actually was, thus giving great satisfaction to Mei-hua. After a day of this Mei Lin broached the question. “Please, Mr. Chambers, can you inquire as to where we will be allowed to lay my father to rest? I do not wish him to be in the potter’s field, and he was certainly not a Catholic, but even the Protestant churches will not allow us to—”
“Do not trouble yourself. It is all arranged.”
“But where—”
“It is arranged. The procession will be tomorrow. I am glad to tell you that the signs are auspicious for a speedy burial.”
What signs? She did not ask the question aloud because she knew the answer. Feng shui probably, and the I-ching, and all the pagan magic done by men like Taste Bad. Not so terrible for them, she had long ago convinced herself. They knew no better, but she did. Mei Lin turned away and made the sign of the cross, then resumed her wailing.
The next morning four strong men carried the coffin downstairs and put it in a hearse covered in white flowers. It had as well streamers and banners on which were written the Chinese symbols for peace and happiness and eternal rest. Even the horses pulling the hearse were white. “Your mother will ride behind in that small carriage,” Mr. Chambers said, as the men secured the coffin in place for the journey. “It is traditional to walk, but she cannot do that considering the distance. Ah Chee can ride with her. You will walk behind the hearse. That is appropriate and you are young and strong.”
Mei Lin wanted to ask him again where they were going, but the mourners were taking their places. There were at least thirty men, which in a community so small was a huge number and showed enormous respect. They fell into place behind the hearse and behind Mei-hua’s buggy. Four of them carried brass gongs and began at once to beat them, this being the most precarious time for the soul of the deceased and therefore requiring the most noise. Those without gongs wailed. Mei Lin spotted some men she knew amo
ng the many she did not, and realized that the strangers joining them, like those who called all day yesterday and last night, had to have been summoned by Mr. Chambers. He had made other provisions as well. Lined up either side of the cortege were six policemen, a dozen in all. They wore their blue uniforms, and their copper badges gleamed in the low-slanting January sun. Even their lead-tipped billies were in full view. There would be no trouble, however strange and foreign the procession might appear.
“Keep one hand on the hearse at all times,” Mr. Chambers said. “That is expected of a child of the deceased.”
Mei Lin put aside any thought of questioning him about where they were going or how far. It was simply easier to do as she was told. She started to take her place, shivering a bit because of the cold and because she wore only a quilted white satin lung p’ao over a long white silk skirt.
“Wait,” Mr. Chambers said, and snapped his fingers. A man came bringing a long cloak made of white fox and put it over her shoulders. Another man brought a square of white cloth, and this was draped over her head. “Now we will go,” Mr. Chambers said, and went to join the mourners, taking a respectful position at the rear.
They progressed slowly north for nearly three hours, along streets that frequently seemed to have been cleared in anticipation of their loud and extraordinary passage. Sometimes, on a particularly crowded block, they had to wait, but soon a way was arranged through the traffic and the procession went on. Gradually the city was left behind. By the time they had reached the Croton Reservoir at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue there were no more passers-by to gawk at the spectacle or cover their ears against the noise. Then, some way further on, Mei Lin saw a pair of houses standing by themselves, side by side, separated only by a strip of grass and trees. She knew at once they were the ones Mr. Chambers had mentioned that night in Delmonico’s when he told her his plans. One for first tai-tai. One for us after we are married.
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